Tuesday, August 21, 2012

After weeks of excitement building up, the day finally
arrived! Yes the 5th anniversary celebrations of Indiblogger! And what
better way to do it than to have a Nokia App Tasting event, hosted by Vikas
Khanna and Rajiv Makhni the two masters of gastronomy and technology, at the
Taj Lands End Hotel in Mumbai!

More than 200 bloggers from all over Mumbai and neighbouring
cities were assembled to make this evening a very special one.

It was kicked off by a spirited “HURRHURR” war cry by the
dedicated Indiblogger team, pumping their

fists and motivating all at the event
to do the same!

It was then time for the charming Tech Guru Rajiv Makhni and
the ever so humble Michelin starred

Masterchef extraordinaire Vikas Khanna to
hold centre stage and keep the bloggers enthralled for the next couple of hours
with their witty tete-a-tetes and quizzes.

They started off by calling bloggers onstage, based on
varying criteria like the youngest blogger, oldest blogger and so on for
introductions and giving away prizes to the wittiest.

This was followed by a demonstration of ‘How to slice onions
easily’ by Vikas Khanna and 4 food bloggers were invited onstage to participate
in a contest to slice the onions as demonstrated and the best ‘slicer’ was
awarded a prize.

And then Rajiv Khanna charmed all bloggers to express their
love for technology by making them kiss their cellphones! This set the grounds for ‘apptasting’ a term
coined to experience some wonderful applications that can be used in daily life
on one’s Nokia phone. Rajiv Khanna presented a few new apps that are bound to be
very popular! The one that I loved was ‘City
Lens’ which will ensure one is never lost for anything, anywhere! One just has to activate this app and point
the phone in any direction and it will display all the different facilities
available in that direction like restaurants, clubs, hospitals etc., with links
for phone numbers and directions to get there! Nokia also announced that within
a couple of weeks all Nokia users will be able to request for creation of apps
that they feel would be useful and Nokia would work on it to develop and present
the requested apps to the world! If that is not user friendly what is!

By this time all the bloggers were charged up for a quiz
that was announced which would have 4 couples

comprising of foodies and
techies. The quiz was fun with the humour injected into the proceedings by the
wonderful hosts. The questions that could not be answered by the participants
were passed on to the audience which ensured a healthy participation of the
audience at all times!

Like all good things this evening too had to end and it did
with a cake being cut to celebrate the 5th

anniversary of Indiblogger.

Dinner was announced and on the way to the dining area, lovely
Indiblogger Tshirts were given away to all the participants.

The bar was open and so was the buffet! Over drinks and
dinner a lot of new friends and contacts were

established, apart from meeting
up with bloggers that one had interacted in the virtual world. There was a lot of bonhomie, good cheer and
photography sessions with the celebrity anchors who were ever obliging.

Thank you Indiblogger and Nokia for a wonderful apptasting
event!

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